I See Through You by Daisy McNally Extract

I am pleased to host an extract from Daisy McNally's new book I See Through You as part of the I See Through You blog tour.

Edinburgh, January 2017

Nine days in total. Nine days since Christmas Eve, and nine days since you disappeared. The realisation afresh, the fury and the confusion; a simultaneous, constant nine-day exhaustion. This is my merry-go-round. My unravelling. I shake the little glass ornament on my desk. My precious fairy-tale snow globe, apparently filled with nothing more than water and bone fragments. As I put it down, I notice that my hands, still parched dry from the thin, cold air, are shaking slightly. The bottle of red wine is half empty. The thought that I probably need to eat something pricks at a corner of my mind. I remember at the same time that I don’t have any food in the flat and so I pour another glass while I tell myself I will think what to do about that. I don’t think about supper. I think about Johnny, and after a while, turn my computer on. It’s near the window so I sit with my back to the outside world, looking blankly into my world. I used to feel fondly about my flat. But when I came back from the Alps, I saw it through Johnny’s non-seeing eyes and it altered for me. I’d cleaned it and bought flowers and champagne. I waited for him to come. I lay outfits on the bed, tried them all on and wondered if they would do. I rearranged ornaments and books. I threw away the tatty, and the dull; I replaced them with the gleaming and the enticing. The flat watched me wait with Scottish sternness and shaking head and the flowers wilted. On day seven, when I got a message but not from him, I threw the champagne against the wall. And now, having witnessed both my anticipation and my humiliation, the flat mocks me. I wish the dust would materialise again, would resettle on the chest and the drabness re-establish itself. It is, after all, just me again: in my one-room apartment on a busy thoroughfare in Edinburgh, and the eager thought of Johnny just that. One shamed occupant and now, tiny glass shards lodged like slivers of glitter between the wooden floorboards. When the phone rings, my eyes jerk to the screen. But it is Tamsin calling. My fingers spasm in anger. I clench my fist over the warm phone as though to crush it and then answer, jabbing at the speakerphone. ‘Hi.’ ‘Skye. There you are. Happy New Year, finally.’ ‘And you. Happy New Year.’ With my hands free, I can log into Facebook. ‘Sorry we never saw you. Were you busy?’ ‘I was.’ In one sense of the word. ‘Hope you had fun.’ Press search . . . ‘It was brilliant. Best fireworks ever.’ I’m not interested in pyrotechnics. ‘Someone at the door. I’ve got to go.’ ‘Wait, Skye,’ she says, and then falters. ‘What are you doing? Really?’

I hold my breath to control the irritation, thinking, I could tell her what I’m doing. Drinking, and thinking about Johnny. Looking everywhere for him. I could tell her but I don’t want to, I’m busy doing these things. I want her to stop bothering me. ‘Nothing.’ ‘And how’s Nora?’

‘OK, no better really. She doesn’t remember things most of the time.’ ‘Poor Aunt Nora,’ says Tam sympathetically. ‘Yes. I’ve got to go, call you later.’ With one eye on my computer screen, I just end the call. I acknowledge and dismiss my callousness at the same time, and drain my glass. Sometimes – two or three times – I have found him active on Facebook at the same time as me. Or active two minutes ago. Of course, this is nothing other than what it says it is. It doesn’t mean anything, other than he’s still alive and this I know by now anyway. And after the burst of adrenalin, there’s nothing, again. I don’t know why I do it. I haven’t yet actually found anything out that’s helpful, or comforting. I don’t know – only that, like an addict without expectation of joy or enlightenment, I trawl social media constantly. There’s a trickery to this sort of drug, not unlike the target himself: just the suggestion of information and a veneer of plausibility, enough to deceive, and tease me into another effort at cracking through. Tam can wait, and she can hear about my aunt’s dementia another time – because nothing is so important as him, and I can’t get near him any other way. I won’t be interrupted. Knowing the worthless and invidious nature of the addiction doesn’t stop me doing it. He’s not really there, even when the screen tells me otherwise – and I am led up various dead-ends in my frustrated search for him until well past midnight and well into the dregs of the Rioja.

I See Through You by Daisy McNally published by Orion Publishing

It started with a lie . . .  Skye has finally met someone she can trust. A holiday romance, of all things. But you know when something real comes along, when it's meant to be. Don't you? A week after returning home, and Johnny has disappeared. He hasn't called or returned her messages.  Then, with the easiest of lies, Skye finds a way back in to Johnny's life - and to the people in it. When she makes an unlikely friend, they realise that Johnny is telling lies of his own. So will the two women find a way to bring him down - or each other?  It ended with the truth.